Brilliant, secretive, and self-contradictory, Charles Dodgson—Lewis Carroll—reveled in double meanings and puzzles, in his writing and his life. Jenny Woolf, also the author of Lewis Carroll in His Own Account, shines new light on the often-obscured Carroll and "writes with affection as well as admiration for the man revealed by her research" (Washington Post). Woolf sets Carroll firmly in the English Victorian age and answers such persistent questions as: Was it Alice or her older sister that caused him to break with the Liddell family? Is there any truth to rumors of pedophilia and certain adult women that followed him? And how true is the "romantic secret" which many think ruined Carroll's personal life?